Jack Smith slammed Donald Trump for pardoning the people who beat police officers on January 6th, and the Republican senator who tried to take him down humiliated himself on national television.
Tuesday was supposed to be the day Republicans finally got revenge on the man who twice indicted Trump, and it fell apart on camera. Sen. Eric Schmitt accused Smith of perjury over a basketball game, then called him a “dirtbag,” and it turned out Schmitt had mixed up the Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Smith, meanwhile, told senators it’s “inconceivable” that Trump pardoned people who assaulted police and fired the prosecutors who charged them. Trump’s brand-new government website spent its first day telling Americans he lost the 2020 election. One of his own advisers told CNN the midterms are “obviously going to be f***ing rough.” And Barack Obama is coming off the sidelines to help Democrats take the Senate. There are 35 days until the midterms.
TRUMP’S SENATOR HUMILIATES HIMSELF ATTACKING JACK SMITH
A Republican senator tried to catch Jack Smith in a lie on live TV and caught himself instead.
Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, one of Trump’s closest allies, wanted to tie Smith to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who investigated Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. He held up a poster board. “What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior-Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?” he asked.
Smith said he wasn’t in Atlanta and didn’t go to any such game. Schmitt accused him of perjury. “You have weaponized the Department of Justice against political enemies to an extent that has never happened in the history of this country,” Schmitt said. “You will go down as a total dirtbag.”
Then Smith said where he actually was: a women’s college basketball game in Maryland that day, the Maryland Terrapins against the Iowa Hawkeyes. Schmitt had apparently confused the Hawkeyes with the Atlanta Hawks.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota didn’t let it go. “I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag, and not get the teams wrong,” she said. It “deserves an apology,” she added.
Schmitt hasn’t apologized. On “The Charlie Kirk Show” afterward, he let host Andrew Kolvet praise him for how he “caught [Smith] out on this NBA game.” Then he told HuffPost that Smith could still be lying, because “Atlanta was the only NBA game or men’s college basketball game that night at 7:30.” Smith had testified he went to a women’s game. Outside the hearing room, Ted Cruz didn’t want to touch it. “Since I didn’t see the exchange, I’m not going to comment on an exchange I didn’t see,” he said.
Smith spent his time on what Trump actually did. Sen. Cory Booker asked him about the people who “savagely beat police officers” on January 6th and were pardoned, and about the prosecutors who charged them. “They’ve been fired unlawfully, they’ve been publicly vilified, and they’ve been attacked in every possible way,” Smith said. “It is inconceivable to me how you can pardon people who assault law enforcement officers and then vilify the officers who are trying to uphold the rule of law.” On his first day back, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people charged over the Capitol riot. More than 1,200 had already been convicted.
Schmitt is reportedly on the short list to be JD Vance’s running mate in 2028. Today he became the senator who called a witness a dirtbag over the wrong Hawks.
TRUMP’S BRAND-NEW WEBSITE FACT-CHECKS HIM ON DAY ONE
Trump launched a new government website Tuesday, and within hours it was telling people he lost in 2020.
He rolled out America.gov himself. “We are launching today something that is really not just something simply a website,” Trump said. “It’s a restoration of America’s promise and a reinvention for the 21st century and beyond.” The site is an AI-powered portal billed as “a government information assistant from the General Services Administration.”
Users asked it whether Trump lost the 2020 election. “Yes,” it answered. “Official certified results show Joseph R. Biden won the 2020 presidential election.” Then it gave the Electoral College count: Biden 306, Trump 232.
On Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said, “We have the best economy we’ve ever had.” His website disagreed. “No official U.S. statistical agency ranks the current economy as the best it has ever been,” it said, noting that unemployment was lower in other periods, “for example about 3.5% in 2022,” and that GDP growth has been faster in many past quarters.
Trump also said Monday that “prices for groceries have come way down from Biden.” The site answered with one word first. “No. Official BLS data do not show grocery prices ‘way down’ in President Trump’s second term versus President Biden’s term.”
It knocked down his investment number too. Trump likes to say he’s secured more than $21 trillion in foreign investment. “No official source I found confirms $21 trillion,” the site said, pointing out that the White House’s own figures are around $11 trillion and mix together company plans, foreign pledges and deals that may never be finished.
He told the UN on September 22 that “more Americans are working today by far than ever before.” America.gov: “Latest official data do not show that more Americans are working ‘by far’ than ever before.” It added that the latest household employment figure is down.
Trump’s administration has spent at least $1.7 million on TV ads telling people how great things are. Now his own government website is telling them to check the numbers.
TRUMP’S OWN ADVISER ADMITS THE MIDTERMS WILL BE BRUTAL
Trump keeps saying the polls are fake. Someone who works for him told CNN otherwise.
“It’s obviously going to be f***ing rough,” a Trump adviser said. The best Republicans can hope for, the adviser said, is a mirror image of 2022: losing the House and narrowly holding the Senate.
CNN reported that the mood in Trump’s inner circle has soured as Republican candidates break with him in public. They’re deleting him from their campaign websites and criticizing his policies. CNN’s Harry Enten found that less than 1 percent of Republican ads in the first half of September even mentioned Trump. For Democrats, it was 20 percent.
Seats that were supposed to be safe are in play. In Texas, Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton is trailing Democrat James Talarico in multiple polls. Trump’s approval is near record lows.
Trump’s answer is more Trump. He’s reportedly directing his MAGA Inc. super PAC to make ads starring himself, to turn November into a referendum on his presidency. “He’ll be playing hard in Florida, Texas, Michigan and Ohio,” one official told CNN. “We’re leaving it all on the table.”
The White House also plans to send JD Vance out to swing states. But according to CNN, Trump’s campaign doesn’t see Vance as “an ace card to deploy in truly competitive territories,” because “he’s still viewed as an extension of Trump.” Sources said both men “are seen as potentially doing more damage than good in certain swing districts.”
Trump’s own team thinks he could hurt candidates in close races. He’s planning to be in those races almost every day in October.
OBAMA RETURNS TO THE TRAIL AS REPUBLICANS RUN FROM TRUMP
Barack Obama is coming off the sidelines for the home stretch.
He’ll headline a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the Washington area on October 7, his first DSCC fundraiser this cycle. He’ll also join Delaware Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a DSCC vice chair, for a conversation about “the importance of flipping the Senate and the stakes of the election,” a DSCC spokesperson said.
An NBC News poll this month found that 43 percent of registered voters, including 77 percent of Democrats, would be more likely to back a candidate Obama endorsed. Nine years after he left office, Democrats still want him out front.
The map is moving their way. Republicans are widely expected to lose the House after the backlash over Trump’s economy and his war with Iran. Democrats need four seats to flip the Senate, and they think they can get there because red states are now in play.
Texas is the biggest example. Talarico could become the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race there since 1988.
The contrast writes itself for voters. Democrats are putting their former president on stage. Republicans are pulling their current one off their websites.
Obama will be raising money for the Senate fight on October 7. Trump will spend October campaigning for candidates who won’t say his name.
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If tonight’s piece told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. A Republican senator calling Jack Smith a dirtbag over a basketball game he got wrong, while Smith explained on camera what Trump did to the prosecutors who charged January 6th rioters. Trump’s own brand-new government website telling Americans he lost the 2020 election. An adviser inside his operation admitting the midterms will be brutal. And Barack Obama returning to the trail while Republicans scrub Trump’s name off their websites. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are burying independent reporting like ours on their platforms while cozying up to this president, which is exactly why a paid subscription is the most direct way to fight back. It costs about 22 cents a day, September ends tomorrow, and the election is 35 days out.
